The new wave of Community Budget pilots will need a lot more drive from central government if the 'whole area' approach is going to catch on
Last week the communities and local government secretary, Eric Pickles, announced the next wave of Community Budget pilots. From March 2012, two local councils will develop ‘whole area’ Community Budgets which includes all funding on local public services.
These two pilots will build on a well developed case for change - originally articulated through the Total Place initiative. The basic idea, which it’s hard to argue with, is that it makes no sense for local agencies to spend lots of small sums on similar groups of people or clusters of services, when they could combine forces to create much more joined-up and efficient services.
Yet the two pilots mark a subtle, though potentially significant, change in direction. Historically, the focus has been more on trying to ‘academically’ map and calculate the efficiency and effectiveness gains achievable from pooling money locally, and on joining up for a specific project or initiative. In contrast, last week’s announcement marks a greater willingness to contemplate wholescale ‘localisation’ of budgets and the integration of a wider range of services locally. To achieve this greater scale of ambition, support will be needed from local partners (including police and crime commissioners and health and wellbeing boards) and all key national partners.
Generating this level of support across organisational and geographical boundaries will be no mean feat. It will require leaders from senior officials and politicians at the local, central and national levels of government to address a number of challenges and minimise the turbulence ahead.
Local leaders will need to generate support from partners and citizens. To do so, they will need to make Community Budgets the central focus of local service transformation, clarify what the Budgets will mean in practice, and communicate the ways in which this initiative relates to other local reforms. The vision for change must be compelling – one that both local agencies and voters can understand and support.
There a number of contextual factors that make developing a clear vision for change particularly challenging. Pickles has promised that ‘nothing is off the table’ when it comes to the pots of money that could be pulled into the Community Budgets and has encouraged areas to think radically. This transformational language may help to motivate the pilot areas. However, knowing that the Budgets could be open-ended doesn’t necessarily help to clarify what they will and will not mean in practice.
Moreover, the pilots will run at a time of radical changes in local governance. There is a danger that Community Budgets will struggle to maintain precedence alongside budget cuts and other innovations such as payment by results or the introduction of new police and crime commissioners.
In addition to strong local leadership, the pilots will need to be supported by a coalition of senior leaders drawn from across a range of government departments (including the Treasury). Much hangs on whether the eight senior civil servants on ‘offer’ to help local areas work up their proposals can draw in a wider coalition of support across Whitehall.
With few formal levers, this team may encounter departmental resistance to giving up control of budgets when the benefits accrue elsewhere and other priorities are demanding resources. Certainly, Whitehall’s track record of ‘letting go’ is not good.
Political backing, starting at the very top, would help address these barriers. David Cameron sees Community Budgets as helping to achieve his commitment to get the 120,000 most troubled families get back on track by 2015. This is encouraging and will help incentivise departments to take the families agenda seriously. But personal commitment from David Cameron to ‘whole place’ budgets would help cement the coalition of senior leaders needed drive the Community Budget agenda in Whitehall.
The government has made a conscious and transparent decision to select pilot areas that already have ‘drive, ambition and capacity,’ and a high level of enthusiasm for Community Budgets. Reluctant or sceptical authorities need not apply.
Consciously biasing the sample by picking areas with existing commitment (rather than randomly selecting areas to take part), may be appropriate for a programme where the objective is to drive change. Further, just having two pilot areas and consequentially only a handful of local leaders may help to crystallise and cement relationships between these local leaders and their central government colleagues.
Nevertheless, not having a rigorous scientific design may create challenges in the future. Pilot leaders will need to convince sceptics that ‘whole place’ budgets could work in areas with lower levels of commitment. Much will hang on how much the proposals are seen to be dependent on local leaders. Ironically perhaps, strong leadership in the pilot stage could jeopardise the roll out of whole place Community Budgets nationally.
The idea of pooling money locally to integrate commissioning is not new. However, examples of services being redesigned as a result of genuine budget pooling are limited. For the two pilots to have more success, leaders, from David Cameron through to community activists, will need to prioritise Community Budgets and use the opportunity they create to drive the transformation of local public services.
Kate Blatchford is a research analyst at the Institute for Government
